


Macushla

by the_most_beautiful_broom



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, RMS Titanic, Strangers to Lovers, Titanic References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23272435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_most_beautiful_broom/pseuds/the_most_beautiful_broom
Summary: Harper Noelle Margaret McIntyre, Countess of Rothes, must survive the unthinkable, when the unsinkable ship hits an iceberg in the middle of the Atlantic // aka the Titanic AU that isn't Jack and Rose
Relationships: Monty Green/Harper McIntyre
Comments: 9
Kudos: 7
Collections: Chopped Madness





	Macushla

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for Chopped madness round I, with a theme of angst, character focus of Harper McIntyre, and tropes of strangers the lovers (marper, who else) and road trip AU (titanic, but not the story you know). Hope you like!

_New York City  
_ _April 18, 1912  
_ _21:46_

“Countess, this way!” 

“Over here, Ms. McIntyre!”

“I’m from The Times, Countess, what do you have to say to the people?”

Harper’s expression is composed as she makes her way down the gangplank of _RMS Carpathia_ , trying to ignore the journalists. Bulbs flash and she winces at their brightness; the yelling gets louder as she gets closer to American soil. 

“Please, Ms.McIntyre, just a quick word for The Globe!”

“Over here, Countess!”

They’re so insistent, and she can practically feel their desperate breath, the notepads and cameras they wave at her, too close. 

“I’m so sorry,” Harper tries to keep her voice firm. “As you can imagine, I’m incredibly drained and I—”

“But you’re a hero, Countess!”

She stops on the path.

A camera flashes, but the reporters wait; Harper’s jaw clenches. 

She turns to the men, searching their faces as another flash fires and her eyes burn from the intensity of it. 

“Who said that,” she asks, quiet.

“Me, ma’am.” A man pushes to the front of the barricade, in a bowled hat. “Ethan Woods, New York Tribune.”

Harper smiles, a smile polished in finishing schools and one she’s worn to tea with the queen. “Mr. Woods.”

The boy draws himself up, pen on paper, and Harper knows he might not see it, but the cameras will certainly catch the boy’s naivete. 

“The only heroes of the Titanic were the men and women who gave their lives so the rest of us had a chance to continue ours. Their bodies are frozen at the bottom of the Atlantic, along with the hopes and dreams of a life in your country. They will never see New York, and the least you can do, the absolute least, Mr. Woods, is to try and honor their legacy instead of diminishing their sacrifice in favor of a woman whose accomplishment is that her pedigree earned her a seat in a lifeboat.”

Ethan’s pen hovers over the notepad; he’d stopped writing after her third word, and now just stares at her, guiltily. 

Harper nods sharply, turning away. After two steps she turns again, sharp. 

“My profoundest gratitude, extends to our rescuers, the men and women aboard the _Carpathia_ and her crew, as well as Able Seaman Monty Green, who kept us alive until she came. They all displayed utmost compassion and fortitude, and I will forever be grateful to them, as well as the fallen heroes.” 

Harper pauses. 

“And you may quote me on that, Mr. Woods.”

* * *

_The Atlantic Ocean_  
 _April 15th, 1912  
_ _00:13_

The sound of steam escaping the boiler room was overwhelming.

Harper had hoped that the deck would be quiet, but steam was bursting from the funnels in the middle of the ship, sounding like a dozen trains had pulled into King’s Cross. Some men were kicking the ice back and forth to each other, and many of the crew members stood as listlessly as the recently-awakened passengers.

Passengers nodded at her as she walked past; Americans, she presumed, from the reverence in their eyes. Her own kind weren’t impressed by titles nor money, especially since they usually came independent of each other, but the Americans were made giddy by both, so she was an enigma. 

Harper Noelle Margaret McIntyre, the only child of Harold Rolland McIntyre, Count of Rothes, whose death left her the Countess of Rothes. As far as titles went, it was an excellent one, but in terms of company, it left her alone on this ship. Most of her acquaintances were too consumed with their husbands and heirs to be persuaded to cross the Atlantic, and even less of them had understood her penchant for an orange grove. 

Saying it felt fanciful, but maybe that was the point.

She’d begun a partnership with the Red Cross a year or so ago, and while she knew it was awfully helpful to sponsor ambulances and wings, Harper had always preferred the littlest of gifts. She had had a dream a couple months ago of every patient’s bed having an orange beside it, a bit of sunshine indoors, through whatever hardship they were going through. Oranges couldn’t grow in England, and Harper thought it’d be wonderful to have miles of them, so she could have them plucked off trees and shipped to the Arkadia hospital, whenever they needed a new box.

“Miss! Miss!”

Harper turned at the familiar voice, to find Zoe Monroe, her maid, weaving in and out of the passengers, arms full. With their issued life preservers. 

“What is this for, Monroe?”

The girl shrugged. “The stewards said we needed them, miss.”

Harper smiled reassuringly, taking her preserver from the girl and fitting her arms through it, but her mind was racing. Could the damage from the iceberg be so bad that they would need their life preservers? But then, again, why would they alarm their passengers if it wasn’t necessary. 

“Thank you,” she said calmly, helping Zoe secure her own preserver. “Maybe we’d better find a member of the crew who could explain all this.”

Worry flitted behind her eyes, but Zoe nodded, following Harper. As they neared the bow, the activity seemed to pick up. Stewards were scurrying, miming to each other to be heard over the noise of the steam. Harper looked through the group, finding a man who she’d seen near their cabins. 

“Mr. Jordan,” she stepped into his path and the steward stopped sharp, automatically bowing slightly. 

“Countess!” he shouted back, “Glad to see you have your preserver on already.”

“We do; why is it necessary? Is the ship alright?”

The man hesitated. “Do you remember—”

A blast of steam interrupted him, and the rest of his sentence was lost. He tipped his head, leaned a little closer to Harper and tried again. 

“Your lifeboat,” he yelled. “Do you remember which one you were assigned to?”

“Number 8,” Harper said automatically, mind reeling. 

“I’d head that way, Miss,” the steward said, voice quieting as the steam relented. Best of luck, Countess.”

He stepped around her, and Harper looked up, seeing the frenzy for the first time. The efficiency of it was more akin to panic, and the faces of the men were more grim than polite. 

Lifeboats. 

They had been brought preservers and were being directed to lifeboats.

The unsinkable ship was sinking. 

_April 15, 1912  
_ _00:57_

“You can do it, Zoe, come now.”

Harper kept her voice stern, as the wind whipped around them. The boat felt fragile, suspended in rope on the port side of the Titanic, cold wind blowing off the sea. She’d been one of the first boarded, along with some others she recognized, most from her wing. Someone had tried to tell her quietly that Monroe would need to wait for a boat more befitting of her class, but Harper hadn’t accepted that. The two weren’t friends, but her family had been in Harper’s family’s employ for generations, and leaving her was not a possibility.

Now the girl was hovering, petrified, on the railing of the ship, unwilling to be coaxed into the boat. 

“Now, Monroe,” Harper ordered, disliking using the tone, but needing action. They needed to fill the boat. 

Zoe clenched her eyes and jumped. 

Harper reached for her when she fell, in one piece, as expected, steadying her.

“See,” she said calmly, “Not so bad.”

They continued the loading. Her peers, most of them without their maids. They all looked composed, expressions trained by society to be calm in the face of anything, and Harper expected their composure hid a level of uncertainty, as hers did. 

Only women, she realized. 

The boat was about 60% full, when four men dropped into the boat. Some of the women tittered, looking up to the deck for explanation. 

“You need rowers, ladies; these men have volunteered,” called one of the stewards. The sailors were all shaped more or less the same, built like people who made a living with their hands not their minds, and Harper felt a bit relieved. 

Even if there were only four of them, to the six oars.

One of the ties to the ship jolted, and several of the women cried out. 

They were being lowered.

“We’re not full,” Harper looked around, then to the sailors. “Gentlemen, we can fit more passengers.”

“Why,” one of the men spoke in a gruff voice, “so we can sink from the weight when we’re safely lowered?”

Harper stared at him. “So we can aid in the rescue.”

The man scoffed. 

“We have to do our part,” Harper said. “Once we’re safely lowered, they can fill the other boats.” 

The man looked at her for a long moment. “Wait, so you think—”

“I think,” Harper interrupted, never fond of being told her own thoughts, “that we can do the most we can. Surely these lifeboats were built to stay afloat with maximum capacity.”

The man shook his head. “You have a lot of misplaced faith, ma’am.”

“I think we all have,” Harper snapped. Their ship was sinking, the ship that God himself wasn’t supposed to be able to touch. Yet here they were. “What’s your name, sir?” 

“I’m not—”

“Take it easy, would you, Caspian?”

They both turned at the interruption; the man at the front of the ship pointed among the men. 

“That’s Caspian, ma’am, who you were talking to. Over here is Penn, and Chase. All Able Seamen, here to get you to safety.”

Harper nodded at all of them, storing their names. Caspian, the tallest of them, Penn, the one in the green coat, Chase, the youngest, and the man who’d introduced them. 

He had dark hair and an oval face, dark eyes, and an air of quickness around him, the look of a man who was always thinking, always wondering. Like the others, he wore the sailor’s uniform of wool pants and a thick turtleneck, but his jacket had a different insignia. 

The way the other men heeded his admonishment, she guessed it meant some sort of rank. “And you?” she asked.

“Monty Green, ma’am; Captain Smith put me in charge of this boat.”

She nodded at him. “Mr. Green. And do you think we’re liable to capsize with others added?”

“I think—”

He was interrupted by a rush of water below them. A hatch was open on one of the lower decks and water was gushing out of it, highly pressurized. Harper couldn’t imagine how that much water was coming out of the belly of the ship. 

“It’s time to go, ma’am,” Chase said. “It’s our job to get you to safety, not to worry about the rest.”

“Five more,” Harper insisted, looking to the front of the ship. “Four more, even three, but surely we can manage just a few more.”

Monty shook his head. “Chase is right, ma’am. We have to go.”

Above, someone hit the side of the boat, and then the ropes hanging their lifeboat began to move, lowering them to the dark sea. 

“Godspeed, men,” a voice called, and then the sounds of the deck faded as they got closer to the water.

The flares started firing a few minutes after, explosions being rocketed into the sky and fanning out in a bright yellow light. The Titanic seemed small when the sky was illuminated, a toy boat in a vast mass of water and air. 

Lifeboat no.6 was nearly flooded by the jets of freezing water being discharged out the side of the ship.

Lifeboat no.3 jolted precariously when the davits jammed on its descent, and passengers had to cling to their benches, as the boat tipped almost sideways.

Lifeboat no.8 was the first to reach the water on the port side, and Harper counted those aboard her boat. Twenty-eight. She hadn’t meant to count the empty spots on the benches, but she had anyways—somewhere around thirty-seven places, depending on the petticoats the women wore. 

Monty took the front-right oar, Chase the left, Penn and Case took the rear two, with most of the passengers clumped in the middle. The women went around and made quiet introductions, among themselves.

Harper tuned the others out when she looked around the boat. She excused herself, and went to the front of the boat. 

“Mr. Green, excuse me?” she asked politely, from his elbow. The man looked up at her, surprised. 

“Yes?”

“How are we being steered?”

He shook his head, exhaling hard as he made another stroke with the oar. “Right now, ma’am, we’re just trying to get away from the boat.”

“Well, yes, I understand that, but eventually, won’t we need to head towards something?”

Monty jerked his chin upwards, and Harper followed the direction. “Over there,” he said, “see the red lights? We’re heading for that. Eventually.”

Harper didn’t see the lights, but she was sure she was just looking for the wrong thing. “Why not now?”

Another cycle of the oar, another quick breath. “With all due respect, ma’am, I’m a little busy at the moment to navigate us.”

“Oh,” Harper said, feeling foolish, ungrateful. Even worse, helpless. “Could I, then?”

Monty’s rowing faltered. “You?”

“Steer us,” Harper finished, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “I could just point us in the direction—”

“It’s hard work, ma’am,” interrupted Chase. “Like Monty said, all due respect, but it’s heavy. You’re fighting the sea.”

Harper could see the goodwill written on both of their faces and knew they didn’t mean to condescend, but she still bristled. “No more than you both are, with the oars.”

“That’s our job.”

“Then steering shall be mine,” Harper decided, ignoring the concerned look between the two of them, and walking to the front of the boat. She didn’t see the sign that Monty sent to the rest of the crew, feel when they stopped rowing, or notice that he’d jumped up to follow her. 

“I assume this is a lever, of some sort?” she called behind her, as she approached the tiller.

“That’s exactly what it is,” Monty said, but his proximity surprised her, and she jumped.

Harper brushed some of her hair out of her face, flustered. “Alright, so what do I do?”

Monty stepped around her, taking ahold of the tiller directly. “The main thing to do is remember it moves oppositely. So you pull left..” he pulled on the tiller and leaned to his left; the boat veered to the right. 

“It goes the opposite way,” Harper finished the explanation, nodding to herself.

“Right,” Monty said, stepping aside.

Harper stepped up to where he had been, looking at the tiller. It was a crude material, heavy, and her evening gloves looked ridiculous hovering over it. She pushed on the lever, and it didn’t budge. She pushed a little harder, and it gave the slightest bit. 

“I see,” she said quietly, Chase’s warning making sense. But she couldn’t back out now. She turned, planting her feet on the deck and pressing her back against the tiller—it moved. 

The ship drifted to the right and Harper felt a trill of satisfaction. She did that; she was moving the boat as much as the men. 

“There you go,” Monty said, and if she wasn’t mistaken, there was a hint of amusement on his voice. Harper looked up at him, and he had the smallest smile on his face, watching her, and her pride. She looked down quickly.

“So that’s it, then? Left for right, and right for left?”

Monty shrugged, then leaned over. “Essentially,” he said, and Harper realized he was untying a rope that ran from the tiller to the middle of the boat. “The hardest bit is keeping her straight.”

Ah, so that was what the rope did: anchored the tiller.

When the rope went slack, the tiller swung hard to the left; Harper realized it was with the tide. This was what Chase had meant, fighting the sea. She crossed to the other side of the tiller, leaned as she had before, and corrected the course; the boat straightened. 

“Just like that,” Monty said. She looked up at him, and he had a funny expression on his face. The look was gone in a moment, and he nodded approvingly.

“Will it be harder when you’re rowing?” she asked.

“Likely. You’re directing the energy we’re generating.”

“Like a pull chain on a lamp,” she said, trying to keep the breathlessness out of her voice.

“Exactly,” Monty said, the same amusement back in his.

Harper liked how his voice sounded like that, like it was carrying delight itself.

“Alright. Thank you for the explanation.”

“Of course.”

Monty ducked his head to her, then went back to his oar.

When they started rowing again, Harper felt the power behind her direct to the tiller. In some ways, it was easier, an opposing force to the sea that she just had to focus. In another, it was more work to direct it the way she wanted. 

Not that she was even certain of that way. 

Monty had said the red lights, and if she looked carefully, she thought she could see something like that. Carefully, Harper pointed the boat towards them. 

_April 15th, 1912  
_ _02:04_

Harper didn’t know how long she’d been steering, and though she was exhausted, she had no intention of quitting. It was hard work, but she was contributing, doing something, and that meant more than the burning in her legs when she pushed the tiller, or her upper arms when she pulled it. 

She asked some of the other women to take the middle two rows; Harper recognized their eagerness in her own need to help. Mrs. Murphy, a woman about her age, with dark hair and a muff over one hand and Zoe took one oar, and Mrs. Blake, a baroness traveling to America to rejoin her son, took the other with her daughter.

Flares were still firing from the Titanic, and Harper tried not to look back. The ship was sinking, her stern tilting up as her bow begin to sink, and Harper wondered how ever they would launch the rest of the lifeboats—there were over two thousand people aboard the Titanic, and there must be a great many boats still to go—with that angle in the way. The lights were still on, casting a glow over the vast sea, and Harper navigated their boat away from the others in the water. 

It was bitterly cold.

If she weren’t at the tiller, Harper imagined she would’ve prodded the other passengers, or even the sailors, for a bit of conversation. As it was, she had to do something to distract them, and herself to a degree. 

“Macushla, Macushla, your sweet voice is calling,” she sang, convincing herself this was a good idea. Her voice wasn’t the prettiest or the cleanest, but the Irish song sounded something mystical over the lapping of the waves against the boat “Calling me softly, again and again.”

“Macushla, Macushla,” chimed in a huskier voice behind her, and Harper turned gratefully to Emori, who sang as she rowed. “I hear it so plainly.”

“Macushla, Macushla,” joined in Mrs. Blake, and her daughter joined too, “I hear it in vain.”

“Macushla, Macushla, your white arms are reaching,” sang Lifeboat no.8, “I feel them enfolding, caressing me still.”

She heard when Monty joined, a deeper voice, softer. “Fling them out from the darkness, my lost love, Macushla.”

“Let them find me and bind me,” Harper sang, the wind cold on her face, in her lungs. “Again, if they will.”

They sang the next verse, then the song again, and then Emori led them in another song. When they didn’t know the words, they hummed along, or guessed the ending of phrases. Their voices seemed to linger in the air, just the water against the boats and the oars against the water.

The Titanic joined in. Not to their song, but the orchestra was playing. On stringed instruments, notes floated over the sea. The other boats fell silent as they looked back at the great ship. 

She began tilting in earnest; the stern seemed to be trying to lift straight into the air. There was a roar like a groan, as if everything inside the ship had burst from its place and was pushing her towards the sea. It was a death rattle, continuing for almost half a minute and the stern rose impossibly higher.

The ship’s lights began to flicker.

The rowers had stopped their motion, unable to look away. The ship seemed to be nearly vertical, her steam spouts almost parallel to the sea, and then the lights went out. They could barely see the silhouette of the ship against the dark night, but they heard the crash when she finally plummeted below the sea. 

The water was quiet, the lifeboats staring in reverence as the ship who had ferried them thus far sank to the bottom of the ocean. 

It was quiet, so terribly quiet, and then it wasn’t.

The screaming began.

_April 15th, 1912  
_ _2:21_

Harper felt her blood run cold. 

There were people aboard her when the ship went down, she realized. There were passengers on the ship that hadn’t made it to a lifeboat. 

They screamed. 

The water was frothing with them, the souls who went down with the Titanic. Even from their distance, Harper could see them, bobbing in their life vests, yelling in terror, panic, shock. They weren’t merely cries of pain, they were screams ripped from throats by agony, chaos, death. The moaning seemed to come from everyone and no one at once; like a body possessed, the sea churned, and the fierceness of it chilled Harper to the core.

She leaned the tiller hard. 

“Hey, what are you—”

“We’re going back,” she yelled to Caspian, uncertain how he could stomach his indignance when the world around them writhed. “They need us.”

“We can’t.”

Harper looked behind her; to her horror, Mrs. Blake sat, wringing her hands, the oar unmanned in front of her. Looking at her mother, Octavia dropped her hands.

“Mrs. Blake,” Harper pleaded. “Pick up your oar, don’t you hear them?”

Every moment, the sounds from the water wrenched through Harper like poison. Mrs. Blake swallowed, her face conflicted. “I do, Countess. But they...they’ll overturn us.”

Harper wanted to sob; to be so close, to be able to help, but to not see it. 

“They are dying, Mrs. Blake,” she said, her voice shaking. “We have to go back.”

A tear slipped from Mrs. Blake’s eye. “I have to see my son again.”

“Please, Mrs. Blake,” Monty said, and Harper looked up to him gratefully. He had left his oar, coming to stand by Harper. “The water is freezing. We have to go back, now.”

Mrs. Blake shook her head. 

Harper couldn’t think past the cries echoing around the boat, the writhing sea. She wanted to press her hands over her ears, block out the sounds, but what kind of coward was she, when people were dying, fifty meters from her.

“We have thirty-seven seats, Mrs. Blake. Please.”

“I will not, Countess,” Mrs. Blake said, her voice shaking. “And neither will they.”

Harper looked at the other passengers. Emori alone had her hands on the oar. Zoe reluctantly placed her hands on the oar as well, but the other men had dropped theirs.

“Mr. Green, can’t you do something?” she begged, desperate.

He had tears in his eyes, the man who was burdened to lead their ship. “Cas, Chase...boys, we must.”

Penn looked down. “I...I have a wife at home, Green. A lad, some two years old. Can’t leave them alone.”

“You talk about leaving them alone, listen!” Harper shouted, her voice clogged and her eyes blurring. “Listen, sir, to people being left alone.”

The cries continued. Isolated, the sounds of abandonment, hopelessness, despair.

Chase winced, but he shook his head. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m all my mum has; I can’t risk it.” 

“You can’t risk it,” Harper echoed, horrified. She could feel the tears freezing on her cheeks; she knew she was close to hysterics from the exhaustion, but the screams were enough to push her closer.

She looked back at Monty. 

His hands were in his pockets and his jaw was clenching. When he looked up at the boat, his eyes were wet, and he tried twice to speak before he made the words come out. 

“I would rather drown with them, then stay out here...but we three,” he said, gesturing to Harper, himself, and Emori, “cannot take this boat back alone. I hope you all remember that we wanted to go back. I hope you cannot sleep at night because of the sound haunting your ears right now, I hope you never forget that we wanted to go back, but you treasured your life more than helping a fellow man. I—”

He broke off, shaking his head sharply, and went to the front of the boat. He sat down behind his oar, his head clenched in his hands. 

Mrs. Blake and the others looked guilty, but they did not take their oars up again.

_April 15th, 1912  
_ _02:42_

“How many were there?” Harper asked, voice hollow. 

The screaming was dying off, slowly, painfully, each silenced cry another victim to the cold and sea. To Harper, it was almost worse than the aching sound of their moans. 

She sat in the seat in front of Monty; she was unwilling to steer them away and he was unwilling to row farther. 

“There were over two thousand passengers,” Monty said, head still in his hands, addressing the floor of the boat. “The lifeboats could hold a little over a thousand.”

A thousand, dead. 

Meters away from them, drowned and frozen and miserable.

Another thought shot through Harper. “The boats weren’t full.”

Monty shuddered. “We’re not even at half.”

Harper covered her mouth. If every boat were filled as theirs…

“What do we do,” she whispered. 

Monty was silent.

When the ocean fell quiet, Harper drew herself up. She went to the tiller again, and Mrs. Blake took up the oar. Caspian did too, and everyone else, at their post. Penn saw a light in the distance, and she turned their vessel towards their rescuing ship. 

_April 15th, 1912  
_ _03:58_

The light wasn’t anything at all. 

As they got closer, Harper saw the looming mass of an iceberg. It must’ve cast a reflection from the lights on any of the lifeboats. The boat was still for a moment, drifting, as they all looked at the iceberg and back at the huddle of boats, nearer to where the Titanic had sunk.

As Harper was turning the boat around, there was a clatter behind them.

“John,” Emori whispered. Harper looked back to see she had dropped her oar, her eyes wide, panicked. “Oh, God, what about John?”

Harper dropped the till, looking at Monty; without being asked, he left his oar to reattach the rope from the hull, to keep the rudder straight. 

Harper rushed to the back of the ship, motioned to Zoe, who slid down the bench so she could have room. 

Emori was rocking back and forth, her hands pressed over her face. 

“He’s dead,” she cried, voice choked. “I know it. I shouldn’t have let him leave me, I should’ve stayed—”

“Shhh,” Harper soothed, wrapping her arms around the woman. Emori’s whole body was shaking, and Harper wondered if she could breathe. “It’s alright, I’m sure he’s—”

“He would’ve stayed,” Emori pulled back, eyes wild, searching Harper's. “He wouldn’t have gotten on a ship if someone else could’ve. He would’ve stayed if he thought someone else could live and I didn’t think of it until now, there were so many people still on the ship, he had to be one of them, he had to be one…”

She started sobbing, her body wracked with the tears pouring out of her. Harper’s heart broke as the words sunk into her. She couldn’t promise Emori’s John was alive. At this point, she couldn’t promise that they’d stay alive.

_April 15th, 1912  
_ _06:27_

They rowed for hours. She took turns with Monty at the oar, grateful for the relief of responsibility. He knew as well as she did that they weren’t sailing towards any goal, but that drifting would lower the morale of the rest of the boat.

She welcomed the burning in her shoulders and thighs; it was a distraction, and a needed one.

Why had she survived? Why was she in a boat, when so many had met their death in the water? What had she done to merit life, when the rest of—

“You can’t do that to yourself.”

She looked up at the quiet words, surprised to find Monty beside her. She looked up at the front of the boat; he’d retied the tiller to the hull. 

“What do you mean?” she asked, rolling her neck. She was tired, so tired, but she didn’t think she could sleep. 

“Ask why,” he said, and Harper looked up at him. 

He had brown eyes, she noticed, and she imagined the expression in hers was probably similar to his. Weary. 

“I can,” she said, looking back at the sea. “It’s better than anything else.”

“It’s not,” he said, and he sat down beside her.

Harper looked over at him.

His profile was nice, she decided, a straight nose, a kind face. He probably liked reading for fun, on a blanket in the middle of a grassy hill. She could see him on a tall ship, perched on one of the masts, a book in his hands and his back against a sail.

She shook her head, and the sunny imagery from it. 

“Alright,” she pushed her oar again. “What are you thinking of?”

Monty’s hands were next to hers on the oars, and he joined the rowing. Harper felt the burden lighten, considerably, and she almost sighed. 

“How a countess is steering our ship better than any of my men.”

A lifetime ago, Harper would’ve smiled. “Are these actually your men?”

Monty shook his head shortly. “Captain Smith assigned me this ship, and they volunteered. I know them from around, but we haven’t sailed together.”

Harper hummed a bit. “That’s a relief. Might’ve lessened my opinion of you.”

“You have an opinion of me?” he asked it quickly, almost reflexively, and when Harper looked over, she could almost see a tinge of red on his ears.

“And if I do?” she asked, curious.

He looked at her, then, away from the sea and at her. He was a little taller than her, even sitting, and his eyes dipped a bit as they ran over her face. She realized he was just as curious as she was, or maybe both of them had been through enough in that night to make them wish the only thing that mattered was what a brown-eyed boy or a brown-eyed girl thought of them.

They looked away at the same time.

_April 15th, 1912  
_ _08:08_

They saw the R.S.S Carapathia at dawn. She went to the coordinates the Titanic must’ve sent her, and Lifeboat No.8 was the farthest from her. 

The men were exhausted, the passengers had been taking turns at the oars, and Harper refused to budge from the tiller. 

She had not stood at this helm, endured everything in the last eight hours, to sit and wait to be taken to safety. 

As the boat rowed closer and closer to the ship, Harper began to lead another song. 

_Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom--lead thou me on.  
_ _The night is dark, and I am far from home--lead thou me on._

_April 18, 1912  
_ _22:15_

She leaves her suite at the hotel, certain she won’t sleep anyways. It’s been an impossible few days, and the reporters at the docks have shaken her. It’s New York, so everything is open; across the street, a little Irish bar is open. It’s ill-lit, needs a good cleaning, and then some, but it’s the kind of unfamilar that Harper needs. She takes a booth in the back, orders a whiskey, and stares at it.

Footsteps, and they stop at her table.

Able Seaman Monty Green.

He looks nervous, hopeful, and she tilts her head; he sits across from her.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he says, and Harper thinks it’s sweet that he wants to explain that to her.

“Nor could I.”

They look at each other, brown eyes and brown eyes over brown whiskey.

“How do we do this?” she whispers.

He doesn’t say anything, reaches out and pushes the drink away from her. His hand stays on the table though, palm up, and Harper doesn’t hesitate for a moment before sliding her fingers into his.

Macushla, she thinks, and she understands now how she’s supposed to survive.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based on the life of Noël Rothes , a heroine of the Titanic; I’d really encourage you to look up her story. Unlinke Harper, she was married (the voyage on the Titanic was to rejoin her husband in America, and purchase an orange grove on the west coast); the Countess displayed commendable courage and endurance that night, and refused any commendation for it after. She and Jones (the character Monty is based off of) remained friends; she bought him a silver watch and he gifted her the hull of the lifeboat with no.8 painted on it. They wrote each other, every Christmas, until she passed away. || "Macushla" was a popular Irish song at the time, it means "my pulse".


End file.
